9-year-old holds lemonade stand for heart-wrenching reason

Tristan Jacobson is in the 3rd grade in Springfield, Missouri and — like what most kids his age do when it gets warmer — set up a lemonade stand at the end of his driveway. But he wasn't hoping to get money to buy a video game or new toy. He was saving every dollar he could so he could be adopted.

Jacobson was just 4 years old when his biological mother left him in the doorway at a Missouri shelter. When he was 5, Donnie Davis and her husband Jimmy took him in and have been raising him ever since.

The Davis family wanted to make Jacobson their son officially on paper, even though they already thought of him as their own.

"This is more for reassurance for him, knowing that he has his forever family and he has our name."
Donnie Davis

Despite the desire, they couldn't afford the legal fees to go through with the adoption. That's when this darling 9-year-old stepped in, selling bottles of lemonade for $1 each to help make Donnie and Jimmy his legal mom and dad.

"She will be my parent. I'm happy because I have a new mom who loves me. "
Tristan Jacobson

He set a goal and saved the money to accomplish it — talk about learning a major lesson early on in life. Jacobson said he wanted to raise $5,000 but surpassed that immensely, raising $7,100 from the lemonade stand and a yard sale and almost the same amount from a YouCaring.com fundraiser.

Think about what you taste when you have a strawberry lemonade – it’s the lemonade first with bits of strawberry after. Here you get that tart lemony buttercream frosting and then can bite into a strawberry flavored cake.

This recipe is super simple, and you can swap out the lemon juice with lime, grapefruit, or orange and whip up all kinds of at home spritzers. And then you should probably add some gin or vodka. Do you see where we're going with this?